02-08-2007, 10:42 AM | #1 |
Enting
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On him alone is any charge laid
Probably someone discussed it before, please refer me to it if you've seen this question before.
As I was rereading LOTR for the n'th time, I came across Elronds speech: "On him alone is any charge laid: neither to cast away the Ring, nor to deliver it to any servant of the Enemy nor indeed to let any handle it, save members of the Company and the Council, and only then in gravest need." Does Frodo break this promise when he offers Galadriel the ring?
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02-08-2007, 11:13 AM | #2 | |
Elf Lord
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02-08-2007, 11:14 AM | #3 |
Elf Lord
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That was a speech designated for an unaware public, and also a crafty way to put all burden solely on Frodo. Elrond perfectly knew that Frodo already bonded with a Ring and won't be able to break his promise to carry the ring till the end, unless the ring itself will decide to change the keeper.
"A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else's care — and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him." (FOTR) So, in this case Frodo was safe:the decision of the Ring's owner change will never be of his own, and he can offer the Ring to whoever he would wish to.
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02-08-2007, 08:19 PM | #4 | ||
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02-09-2007, 04:59 AM | #5 |
Elf Lord
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Well, Gandalf dead, the ring working its power on others in the Company.. seems pretty grave.
The other aspect to this is his "testing" of Galadriel. Depending on which version of her life you look at, her refusal of the Ring, offered freely, was what allowed her to end her exile, forsake ME and return to Valinor. So maybe Frodo was acting as an agent of a higher mission in this particular instance. |
02-09-2007, 06:05 AM | #6 | |
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On him alone is any charge laid
Thank God the West Midlands serious crime squad were not involved in this investigation. .................... Also - you ignored the rather important difference between 'handling it' and 'offering ownership' of it ... "nah then missus, nice bit of jewlry this'n - feel the quality o' that - real gold, dat! - yours fer a steal!" *frodo opens up coat revealing 101 watches* ................... Quote:
Then, if we agree this, since he does offer it, it would have to be assumed that it was the will of the ring, working through Frodo, that offered itself ... The question is though, does Galadriel break faith by so seriously considering it - by allowing herself to come to the very crux of being on a knife edge of going one way or the other? Elrond and Gandalf (and others) will not even entertain the idea of going near that battle of temptation in the first place. yet the ring and Galadriel together? Last edited by Butterbeer : 02-09-2007 at 06:08 AM. |
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02-09-2007, 06:43 AM | #7 | |
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"Need anything dangerous ever cross any of our paths?"
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Furthermore, I don't think she let herself on the knife's edge; Tolkien also states that "Galadriel's rejection of the temptation was founded upon previous thought and resolve" - she wasn't toying around; the mirror scene was the final act in her fight against its influence. As such, "she was pardoned [for rebellion and refusal to return] because of her resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself". Last edited by Landroval : 02-09-2007 at 06:44 AM. |
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02-09-2007, 06:55 AM | #8 |
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Morning Landroval - hope you are good?
mmm ... an interesting angle then occurs - if, we take it as you say, if she is pre-determined and bears no risk from the the temptation of the ring ... so close ..in her very grasp ... then is not her 'resistance to the final and overwhelming temptation to take the Ring for herself' - not a sham? and thus is not her pardon? it seems to me we cannot have it both ways - either there is 'overwhelming temptation' and therefore a very real threat, or there isn't - hence there would be a question: did she, at the time it presented itself, allow herself to get too close to the very point of temptation in the first place? No doubt to my mind she did - nor, either, indeed that she did as you say, succeed in resitance - hence her pardon - else that pardon means little or is nonsensical - and thus, looked at so, what Tolkien states about morality here can have value- |
02-09-2007, 09:18 AM | #9 |
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I'm fine Bb, thanks for asking
I didn't argue that she was pre-determined (as in predestined) - only that she previously fought against temptation and won on the inside. Admittedly, it is something altogether different to reject the temptation when faced with the ring itself. Did she allow herself to get too close? I don't think so. What would have been the alternative? What if she knew by (the elven/mirror's) foreknowledge that the offering of Frodo would occur? And even if not, was she supposed to avoid him all the way? Shut him up when he would start talking? Bar him entrance into Lothlorien altogether? What if, instead of her, Frodo would have given the ring anyway to another one (elf, or even Boromir!) - what would that have solved? At least, in this chain of events, Frodo would see what would happen to others when tempted; and perhaps this helped him a lot, when he later faced Boromir, who requested to relieve him of this burden. |
02-10-2007, 07:50 PM | #10 | |
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02-11-2007, 03:38 AM | #11 |
Enting
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So Frodo's offering the ring to Galadriel was a higher power acting? Either the ring itself or the fateful test of Galadriel? Or even both wills coinciding?
Nice thought
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02-11-2007, 07:13 AM | #12 | |
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Considering that in the Atrabeth it is stated that:
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02-11-2007, 08:49 AM | #13 |
Enting
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I'm not so sure about the ring, though.
It seems that the ring tries to get back to its master, but from what G&G co. (Gandalf and Galadriel) say, some other very strong will may successfully master the ring (and lesser wills just get betrayed by it). So it may be the ring's power (and free will) too. (Although of course Sauron and even Melkor ultimately played a part ordained by Eru)
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The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day! What does "LOL" mean? |
02-11-2007, 03:09 PM | #14 | |
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this, to me, opens up the core of, most of the genuinely interesting debates on here - and those that most of the better read and free-thinking minds on here have been, one way or another, engaged in ... i look forward to see where this freely develops ... best, BB Last edited by Butterbeer : 02-11-2007 at 03:10 PM. |
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02-11-2007, 08:00 PM | #15 | |
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02-11-2007, 10:20 PM | #16 | |
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02-12-2007, 12:29 AM | #17 |
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I think Galadriel was trying to entice Frodo into giving her the ring, a situation where he was strongly overmatched and thus not completely responsible, but her conscience won over in the end and she refused.
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02-12-2007, 12:59 AM | #18 | |
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All this scary stories of a big bad ...Ring we are hearing from Gandalf, but there are several statements in the text that indicates that Gandalf has had no idea about the real power of the Ring , “It is far more powerful than I ever dared to think at first”.But there is also this, "...you must remember that nine years ago...I still knew little for certain." (FOTR).Still in all this 9 years he has acquired the only bits of information from Minas Tirith's library.Whatever he was talking about the Ring was a mere feed back from the Elves. The Elves for certain knew about the real abilities of the Ring, because if to think logically, they were making the Rings of Power for themselves, and the forth ring supposed to lock the Rings of Power in the mighty Chain of Power. Sauron was not supposed to be included, he simply invited himself by making a few adjustments to the original design of the rings. The Ring, even with Saurons modifications, was not that powerful as Gandalf and Elrond has tried to accentuate.Sauron the Maya had never been successful in his campaigns even when he was carrying the One Ring on his finger. Galadriel , the wielder of Nenya also, knew that the Ring without any harm could turn her into the mighty Lord(ess) of Middle-earth by channeling of the whatever left magic to her, to the Chain of Power, but on another hand it could channel the magic from her to Sauron. She was never certain of this, and, probably, this was her the only reason of refusing such impressive token of friendship.
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02-12-2007, 06:07 AM | #19 | |||
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02-12-2007, 09:00 AM | #20 | ||
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But we don't see Frodo offering anybody else the ring, So maybe it was not really his choice to offer it. But I don't think he would have offered it even to Galadriel after the episode with Boromir. If that scene would have come before, would we still have the scene with Galadriel? I wonder...
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